As it was, I tumbled into bed and slept almost as soon as my head touched the pillow.
I had forgotten to blow out the candles, and they were but half burnt, yet extinguished, when I awoke from a dream that Isabel was kneeling beside me in their dim light to find her standing at the bed's foot in a fresh print gown and the room filled again with sunshine.

Her eyes were red.

Poor soul! she had but an hour before said good-bye to Archibald; and Spain and its battlefields lay before him, and between their latest kiss and their next--if another there might be.

Yet she smiled bravely, telling me that all was well, and that her father would be ready for me in the summer-house.
Major Brooks, when I found him there, made no allusion to the events of the night.

His face was mild and grave as at our first meeting.
At the sound of my footsteps he picked up his Virgil and motioned me to be seated.
"Let me see," he began: "_liquidi fontes_, was it not ?"--and forthwith began to dictate at his accustomed pace.
"But seek a green-moss'd pool, with well-spring nigh, And through the grass a streamlet fleeting by.
The porch with palm or oleaster shade-- That when the regents from the hive parade Its gilded youth, in Spring--their Spring!--to prank, To woo their holiday heat a neighbouring bank May lean with branches hospitably cool.
And midway, be your water stream or pool, Cross willow-twigs, and massy boulders fling-- A line of stations for the halting wing To dry in summer sunshine, has it shipped A cupful aft, or deep in Neptune dipped.
Plant cassias green around, thyme redolent, Full-flowering succory with heavy scent, And violet-beds to drink the channel'd stream.
And let your hives (sewn concave, seam to seam, Of cork; or of the supple osier twined) Have narrow entrances; for frosts will bind Honey as hard as dog-days run it thin: -- In bees' abhorrence each extreme's akin.
Not purposeless they vie with wax to paste Their narrow cells, and choke the crannies fast With pollen, or that gum specific which Out-binds or birdlime or Idxan pitch--" -- And so on, and so on, until midday arrived, and Isabel with the claret and biscuits.